Fountain of Youth

I haven't reviewed a movie in half a decade, but I felt a warning was justified in this case. I have had to start and stop this one several times throughout my first and last viewing of this piece of dialogue garbage on Apple TV+.

I went in wanting to like this movie, I'm a huge fan of John Krasinski's work and an even bigger fan of Natalie Portman & her whole repertoire dating back to Leon: The Professional. So expectations were high coming in.

This film is just off in every way. Pacing? Weird. Dialogue? Poorly written, corny and cringe. Acting? Even though the artist have the chops to do so, the writing is so terrible that they do justice to them in a bad way. The acting is laughable from almost every character. Suspense? Predictable and rips off too many mainstream plot lines. Romance? Pathetic attempt, comes off fake. Conflict resolution? I mean, I guess maybe you could say so but the movie is so predictable and corny that you don't even realize that this might be the best part of it because everything else pales in reverse by comparison.

Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time. Huge swing and miss by Apple TV+. This would have bombed at the box office.

Yeah, the same director of criminal dark comedies like "Lock, stock and two smoking barrels " is making pg-13 movies, trying to obscure all Indiana Jones movies and hundreds of adventures like "Meg" etc.

I don't know really. May be I'm just too old to watch same cliched films over and over again, but everything great has ended 10 years ago or even earlier. People don't need new Lara Croft, people need a rethinked concept of some NEW adventure formula. Not just "seek'n found" with chases and one-trait-characters. Guy Ritchie is perfect at crimes, perfect at mixing it with dark comedies. But his last movies are just lame attempts to grab a bite of "Umcharted"-like blockbusters.

Sorry, but no. Skip.

How is this the same writer who wrote Zodiac??? The writing in Fountain of Youth was brutally cliche and soulless and derivative. So I'm praying Apple didn't do something idiotic like get some AI input or something, because that's what it felt like - painfully so at times.

The actors did the best they could with the script, and I LOVE that this is a non-franchise, non-reboot, original story. So a huge bravo for that, but the writing was just a constant distraction.

Guy Richie is Guy Richie, and I can see why he's a safe choice for film execs, but damn- this film is a good example of needing to raise the bar. Krasinski and Portman give it their all, but I felt bad for them having to deal with these characters and the painfully awkward dialogue.

C'mon Guy Ritchie, Natalie Portman, and John Krasinski. I'm a huge fan of all three but this movie was painful. None of the characters were interesting, the "Dad" back story didn't build any intrigue, the fighting between the siblings was obnoxious, the dream sequences were cheesy, I could have made better special effects with my home computer a YouTube tutorial, and the ending was awful. The whole movie I kept thinking about how excited the actors must have been to sign on to work with Guy Ritchie, but then so disappointed to see the finished product. I expected way more than this embarassing dribble.

I've been asking for a new true adventure film since the last National Treasure, but I guess I just wanted it too much, and I got the curse instead of the blessing.

It looks fine, on the surface. Guy Ritchie makes an international hunt for treasure that certainly impresses visually, but in terms of content (and note that Ritchie didn't write this film, when writing is one of his true strengths as a filmmaker) it's as shallow as they come. Some rote puzzles, intermittent fist fights, and an utterly charmless gang of bystanders that follow Krasinski wherever he tells them to go. Stanley Tucci literally just shows up once, for about two minutes total, and you can almost see him just turn around to collect his paycheck at the end of his scene.

Do yourself a favor and go play the new Indiana Jones video game instead. It's so, so much better than this, and was made with true reverence for the art of adventure films.